The Twitter Retweet Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Welcome back to the weekly Twitter column. This week I want to speak about a new development in the Twitter retweet wars. In the first episode we have seen a massive rebellion against the new retweet functionality introduced by Twitter itself. A huge wave of resistance has forced Twitter and most third party Twitter clients to ensure support for the old school retweet with the added “RT” or “RT:”. This week we witnessed a new chapter of the retweet wars.

The evil Twitter empire has attacked the rebel forces by removing traditional retweets from Twitter search.

Both searches from the search box and by clicking on popular hashtags on the frontpage have been robbed of the “RT” containing retweets. Only retweets posted using the built in Twitter retweet feature were accepted in search results.

The imperial headquarters justified this hideous attack by stating that RT retweets do not add any value and only clog the search results. Obviously the only meant retweets they don’t approve of. Those retweets that use the popular “RT” method Twitter frowns upon.

The rebel forces were quick to regroup and soon brave bloggers and Twitter users swarmed to attack the imperial clones.

Yes, I said clones. Twitter retweets are just clones. The retweet looks exactly the same as the original tweet but the sender is somebody else. You can’t even edit it when retweeting. So no comment or other addition is possible. The rebels launched many RT retweets and soon the imperial attack has been repelled.